Co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, comic book artist Steve Ditko, died in his apartment in New York City on June 29th. He was 90 years old.
From The Guardian:
Steve Ditko, who has died aged 90, was the artist who brought Spider-Man and Doctor Strange to life, one of the three crucial creators of the Marvel explosion that redefined comic books in the 1960s. The trio – Ditko, the writer Stan Lee and the artist Jack Kirby – created and refined the iconic characters who moved from featuring in 12-cent comics to dominating film screens in productions costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Like Kirby’s, Ditko’s work was stylised, but where Kirby’s square-jawed characters’ power exploded through the panels, Ditko’s characters stretched through them, their faces almost cartoonishly expressive. He was the perfect artist to combine the grace of Spider-Man with the nerdish insecurity of his alter ego, the teenager Peter Parker.
Spider-Man was Lee’s idea and he first gave it to Kirby to develop. Unhappy with the result, he passed it on to Ditko, who came up with the costume, powers and back-story. He was an immediate hit when he debuted in Amazing Fantasy 15 in 1962. Marvel stories were all produced in much the same manner. The writer, in the early days almost always Lee, provided the artist with a plot line, sometimes just an idea, which the artist turned into a story. Lee then added dialogue to the finished panel art.
Obituaries and remembrances are everywhere for this giant of the comic book world.
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